One of the things we often say we come to Church for is to meet the Lord in word and sacrament. I think it’s quite obvious what we mean by that. We meet the Lord in word through listening to the words of Scripture and through our dialogue with him in prayer. And we meet the Lord in sacrament, through our sharing in his presence with us and his life given for us and to us in the sacrament of Holy Communion. But do we, in fact, really believe that we do meet the Lord in these ways when we come to Church? And if we do, what is our response to meeting the Lord? Do we go home from church as changed people, people who’ve come to a deeper understanding of our faith and who are inspired to live out that faith in the week ahead, or do we go home as the same people we were when we left home a little earlier on Sunday morning? One thing I’ve mentioned in the past is our need to share our faith with others, but do we ever tell people that we’ve even been to church, let alone that we’ve met the Lord there and how that’s affected us, or do we simply not mention it at all to anyone else but rather keep it to ourselves, as though our coming to church on Sunday was some kind of secret that we’re only willing to share with those who also go to church?

If our responses are of the latter kind, can we really say that we have met the Lord in word and sacrament when we’ve been to church? Surely if we truly believed that we had met the Lord in church, we’d want to tell people about it rather than keeping it to ourselves? Surely, if we truly did meet the Lord in church it would be such a wonderful experience that we wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about it even if we wanted to. So why do so many Christians keep their faith, and their church attendance, a secret? And they do, when I was saying my goodbyes to people at work before I left to go to Mirfield as an ordinand, I was amazed by the number of people who took me to one said and told me that they go to church but don’t say anything about it because of the ‘stick’ they’d get from people for it. Well, perhaps that’s true, but surely the joy and the thrill of meeting the Lord would outweigh any ‘stick’ we might get from people on account of our faith, and we couldn’t help but tell people about it?

This morning, I’d like us to think about our own experience of coming to church and our response to our meeting the Lord in word and sacrament here and compare these things to the experience and response of the two disciples we read about in this morning’s Gospel. They also met the Lord in word as they listened to him and spoke with him on the Emmaus road. And we could say that they met the Lord in sacrament too, because they recognised him, they recognised his presence with them, in the breaking of bread.

The response of those two disciples to meeting the Lord in word and sacrament was very different to the response many of today’s disciples have to coming to church. Their response was that their hearts burned within them as they heard the Lord’s words, as he explained the Scriptures to them on the road. Their eyes were opened as he broke bread at table with them. And they were so overcome with joy, so thrilled by the experience, that they set out straight away to travel the seven miles back to Jerusalem. We have to remember that this was a journey of perhaps two hours by foot, at night, in a land and time where bandits lay in wait to ambush unwary travellers and where wild animals such as wolves, bears, and even leopards and lions, nocturnal predators, still roamed the land. And yet they were so overcome with joy and excitement by their meeting with the Lord that they were prepared to risk those dangers to go and tell the other disciples, a group of people who were hiding out from the authorities at the time let’s not forget, to tell them about their experience.

So, when we come to church to meet the Lord in word and sacrament, do our hearts burn within us as we hear the word of the Lord? Are our eyes opened so that we really see and understand in a better and clearer way what we’re hearing and seeing when we meet the Lord in word and sacrament? Do we really recognise the Lord’s presence among us when the bread is broken, and we receive Holy Communion?

One of the problems we have in understanding the true power and meaning of the Lord’s words is the distance of time and culture that separates us from those words, from Jesus and his contemporaries. That is a problem but one of the things we can do to help overcome, or at least lessen this problem is to learn more about the faith and culture of First Century Jews. That can help us to understand what Jesus’ words would have meant to those who first heard them and just how powerful, not to mention provocative and potentially dangerous they were.

Have you ever wondered, for example, why Jesus’ attitude towards the Sabbath laws provoked such a strong reaction in the authorities, why it seemed to be this more than anything else that stirred up their anger and plots against him? In St Matthew’s Gospel we read about an argument Jesus had with some Pharisees about him allowing his disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath, something that the law forbade. Jesus countered their complaint with some arguments from Scripture, including one that reminded them that the priests profane the Sabbath to carry out their duties on the Sabbath. He then goes on to say that there is “something greater than the temple…here.” Implying that he is greater than the temple. But for the Jews the temple wasn’t only the centre of their worship as a people, it symbolised their whole view of the universe and it was, to them, the very dwelling place of God on earth. So for Jesus to say that he is greater than the temple was to imply that he is greater than their understanding of the universe, more important than God’s dwelling place on earth. He then went on to say that he, the Son of Man, was “Lord of the Sabbath.” But the Sabbath was created and hallowed by God himself so who could be Lord of the Sabbath except God? When we put these words back into their First Century context we can understand how powerful, provocative and dangerous they were. We can understand why these arguments about the Sabbath stirred up such anger against Jesus and why they led to plots against him, because we can understand these words as claims by Jesus that he was equal with God, or perhaps even is God.

Another thing we can do to grasp the power of the Lord’s words is to try and put ourselves in the shoes of those people he was speaking to and about. One very good story to do this with is the story in St John’s Gospel about the woman taken in adultery. I’m sure we’ve all been in the position of having people baying for our blood, at least metaphorically speaking, so we should have no difficulty in putting ourselves in the position of the woman in that story. How often have we had people accusing us and wanting some action taken against us, knowing that those doing the accusing and wanting to punish us are no better than us and are guilty of all sorts of things they ought to be called to account for themselves? At times like this, how often have we wished that someone, anyone, would speak up on our behalf and get the mob off our backs? But how often have we been part of the mob, tut tutting at what someone else has done, and saying this or that ought to be done about it, and perhaps about them, whilst ignoring the fact that we, and the rest of the mob are far from perfect, or innocent, ourselves? And how often have we had to back down and walk away, shamefaced, when someone has had the courage to stand up to us and point that out? As Christians, we ought to have no trouble putting ourselves in the Lord’s shoes, not condoning wrongdoing, but standing up to and speaking out against the hypocrisy of those who would condemn others whilst being sinners themselves. But how often have we had the courage to do that? If we can put ourselves in the shoes of these people in this way, we can make the Lord’s words come alive and we can meet him in and through his words in a very powerful and meaningful way.

Our distance in time and culture from Jesus and his contemporaries can also be a problem for us when it comes to understanding how we meet the Lord in sacrament too. What we have to try and do here is to understand that what Jesus meant by remembrance when he told his disciples to do this in remembrance of me, isn’t what we mean by remembrance.

The Lord’s last supper was a Passover meal and so to understand what Jesus meant, we have to understand remembrance in the context of a Jewish ceremonial religious meal. To this very day, at their celebration of Passover, devout Jews recount the story of the first Passover. But they don’t think of this as simply remembering and retelling the story, they do it with the understanding that, through the ceremonial retelling, they become part of the story. They remember and recount the story so that the events of the first Passover become a living reality for them in the present. And this is the way we’re called to remember the Lord’s last supper with his disciples.

Jesus was a Jew and so when he spoke of this ceremonial remembrance, he didn’t mean a simple recollection, a mental recalling of what he’d done, so the sacrament of Holy Communion is not a simple memorial of what Jesus did that night or what his Passion and death means for us. As we remember and recount the story, the events of that night become a living reality for us in the present. Some people argue that as Jesus’ sacrifice was made once, and only once, for all, it can’t and doesn’t need to be repeated. But that itself is a misunderstanding of what’s believed to happen through this ceremonial remembrance. No one is saying that the sacrament of Holy Communion is a repeat of Jesus’ sacrifice, but rather that, just as for the Jews, the ceremonial remembrance and recounting of the Passover story makes the first Passover becomes a living reality in the present, so in the sacrament of Holy Communion, Jesus own sacrifice, the sacrifice he made once and for all almost 2,000 years ago becomes a living reality for us in the present. That’s not an easy concept for us to understand but if we can get our heads around it, it does make it so much easier for us to understand too, that we do indeed meet the Lord in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

There can be no doubt that we do need to share our faith with others, and I think we’ll be more inclined to do that if we’re able to share our experience of faith, and the best way we can do that is by meeting the Lord regularly in word and sacrament ourselves. We need to meet the Lord in word and sacrament so that we can grow in faith and understanding and so be more able to share our faith with others. We need to meet the Lord in word and sacrament so that we can be inspired to live out our faith so that others can see the difference being a Christian makes to us and in our lives. And, just like those two disciples who met the Lord on the Emmaus road, we need to let the joy and excitement of meeting the Lord in word and sacrament help us to overcome any fear or reticence we might have about sharing our faith, and about sharing our experience of meeting the Lord in word and sacrament, with others.

Amen. 

Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, 23rd April 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Let all the earth cry out to God with joy; praise the glory of his name;
proclaim his glorious praise, alleluia!

The Collect
Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen Lord:
give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life,
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)       
Acts 2:14, 22-33
Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-11
1 Peter 1:17-21
Luke 24:13-35

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Acts 2:14, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35

If we had to choose from among the Apostles, one Apostle for today, one with particular relevance to today’s world, who might that be? I think it might well be the Apostle who features in our Gospel reading this morning, it might well be St Thomas, Doubting Thomas as he’s often called.

I say that because, in our Gospel reading today, we see in St Thomas the kind of attitude that’s so prevalent in today’s society. St Thomas didn’t believe what he was told, and he wouldn’t believe unless he could see with his own eyes and touch with his own hands. And isn’t this just the kind of attitude we find in so many people today? So many people today are doubters and sceptics, they want absolute proof before they’ll believe anything they’re told, and if they can’t get that proof, they’ll simply come up with their own ideas to explain what they’re being told. And we see this in quite a few different ways.

One way we see this is in the priority people today give to science over religion. Science is observable and testable. A scientific theory is one that can be tested by many people to see if they can reproduce the same results and draw the same conclusions. A theory that can’t be tested in that way, isn’t scientific. So science is concerned with the search for facts. Religion, on the other hand, is concerned with truth and faith. Religious truth and faith aren’t necessarily unreasonable, but, as the Letter to the Hebrews says,

‘…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ 

We could say that the difference between science and religion is the difference between knowing and believing, and these days, it seems that people want to know before they’ll believe.

Another way we find this kind of attitude in today’s world is in the mistrust so many people have of what they might call the official version of things and of perceived wisdom. So many people today are so mistrustful of any kind of officialdom or authority that they don’t believe anything they’re told. So many people today seem to believe that any kind of official statement must be a lie because those who are making the statement, those in authority, have a vested interest in keeping things as they are and so they don’t want people to know the truth because that would threaten their authority and their grip on power. So people prefer to find out the truth from other sources.

As one person once said to me, he’d never been to university, but he was far more intelligent than anyone who had been because he knew things they don’t teach at university. At university ‘they’ brainwash you into believing what ‘they’ want you to believe. He’d found out the way things really are by teaching himself the truth about things. The things you only find out about if you know where to look for them on the internet.

And that mistrust of officialdom leads to one of the most common ways this kind of attitude is revealed in today’s world, the conspiracy theory. So many people today seem to believe that, if there’s an official version of events, it must be a lie, or at least involve some kind of conspiracy to hide the full or the real truth from people. But have you ever noticed that conspiracy theories are often so complicated and would need to involve so many people, all of whom would have to keep silent both about the truth and the conspiracy to cover up the truth, that they’re often more unbelievable than the official story? One thing I’ve also found about conspiracy theories is that they often seem to be rooted in a lack of understanding; a person doesn’t, or can’t understand how something can have happened so, therefore, they won’t believe that it can have happened and there must be another explanation which is what really happened, the real truth.

We don’t know why St Thomas wouldn’t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least some of these ways of thinking I’ve just spoken about were at work in him. St Thomas was no doubt a rational person, he knew that when the Romans crucified someone, that person died, the Romans made sure of that and were very good at that sort of thing. He would also have known that the dead, don’t come back to life, get up, and walk out of their tombs. So his disbelief, his scepticism when he was told that is exactly what Jesus had done, is understandable.

And this is one way St Thomas is relevant to today’s world because it leads us to one of the ways in which, over the years, people have tried to explain away Jesus’ Resurrection. Some people have agreed that Jesus was seen, alive, after his crucifixion but only because he didn’t actually die on the Cross. Some people have claimed that Jesus had only passed out and was taken from the Cross unconscious, but alive. Some have claimed that when Jesus said he was thirsty, this was a pre-arranged signal for someone to administer a drug, passed to him in the sour wine, that would knock him out so the guards would think he was dead and take him down from the Cross, thus setting the scene for his apparent resurrection on the third day.

What we’re doing here, of course, is entering into conspiracy theory land. Just think about it. It’s believed that the Romans did offer drugged wine to those being crucified. But there were three men being crucified that day and Jesus died much more quickly than the others. So for the wine Jesus took to contain a more potent drug than did the wine that was offered to the other two does suggest a conspiracy, and one that the Romans themselves were probably involved in. That claim has been made and some have even gone so far as to suggest that the plan was inadvertently wrecked by the soldier who stabbed Jesus with a spear, which he did because he wasn’t in on the plot. Given that there would have only been five soldiers in the crucifixion guard, it seems very unlikely that, having gone to the trouble of planning all this, the plotters would have been so careless as to let someone wreck their plans by simply walking up and killing Jesus by stabbing him with a spear doesn’t it?

However it happened, Jesus was dead, and St Thomas wouldn’t believe that he’d risen. So perhaps he thought the women had gone to the wrong tomb, as people today still suggest. They must have been distraught on the Friday as Jesus was taken away for burial, so they could have been confused about the precise location of the tomb, though that doesn’t seem likely. We get upset at the funerals of our loved ones don’t we? But we don’t forget where they’re buried do we?  In any case, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus would have known where the tomb was so the disciples could have checked with them whether the women had gone to the right place or not. And so did the authorities because they put a guard on the tomb. And they didn’t claim that the women had gone to the wrong tomb, in fact quite the opposite. They claimed that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body which in itself is a tacit admission that, on that Sunday morning, Jesus’ tomb was empty. 

The accusation that the disciples stole Jesus’ body in order to claim that he’d risen from the dead is, of course, the original and still most popular conspiracy theory surrounding Jesus’ Resurrection. But again, there are all sorts of problems with this theory. First of all, who was involved in the conspiracy? Not St Thomas, judging by his comments to the other Apostles, if there was a conspiracy, he appears to have known nothing about it. And unless they were involved in some double bluff, not St Peter nor St John either because they ran to the tomb and were just as puzzled by what they found as the women had been. And they were two of Jesus’ inner circle, so if there was a conspiracy of any kind, we would expect them to have been in on it. Also, the tomb was guarded so how did the disciples manage to pull it off? How did they get past the guard, remove the stone from the entrance to the tomb, and take Jesus’ body away without being seen? Even if the guards had fallen asleep, is it likely the conspirators could have done all that without waking them up? The conspirators would have had to move very quickly as well as quietly to carry out their plans, so why did they bother taking the gave clothes from Jesus, folding them up and placing them back, neatly? Wouldn’t they have been far more likely to have simply picked up Jesus’ body, still wrapped in the gave clothes and making their escape as quickly as possible? In any case, if the authorities thought Jesus’ body had been stolen, why didn’t they find the disciples, or Joseph and Nicodemus, and beat a confession out of them, as they’d tried to do with Jesus? Beat them into revealing the truth about what they’d done and showing them where Jesus’ body now was? This theory that the disciples stole Jesus’ body in order to fake his resurrection is the most common theory amongst those who want to deny Jesus’ Resurrection, but it really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

There’s no suggestion in St Thomas words that he was involved in or even suspected any kind of conspiracy, but perhaps he thought that the other disciples were just so distraught by what had happened, that they wanted so much for Jesus to be alive, they were simply seeing and believing what they wanted to see and believe. But in that case we have the problem of multiple attestation. When a haunting or possession is reported, and a priest is asked to visit a house to investigate, one of the things that’s always asked is whether the disturbances or appearances have been witnessed by more than one person. If they have, the likelihood is that there is a genuine problem of some kind. It doesn’t mean it’s supernatural in origin, but if more than one person has witnessed a disturbance, something is going on, it’s less likely to be imaginary or the cause of individual mental health issues, or substance abuse. Many people saw Jesus, alive and well, after his death so it’s very unlikely to have been a case of grief giving rise to hallucinations or wishful thinking. 

When we examine all the conspiracy theories and alternative histories that have been proposed to deny and explain away Jesus’ Resurrection, we soon find that they really don’t hold water. In any case, one of the very best arguments in support of the truth of Jesus’ Resurrection is that his disciples made that claim at all. Why would they? What, on earth, did they have to gain? They’d just seen their leader put to death, saying that he’d risen from the dead was only, ever going to land them in trouble with the authorities.  And they had nothing to gain in earthly terms: they weren’t a large group with any hopes of achieving power or wealth by saying that Jesus had risen from the dead, still less by pointing the finger of blame at the authorities, as Acts of the Apostles tells us they did. So why did they do it, unless they believed from the bottom of their hearts that it was true? Why were they prepared to die for that belief, which many of them did, unless they believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that they had seen him, and spoken with him after his Resurrection? 

In his novel, The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle has his great detective, Sherlock Holmes say, 

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

We have to say that the alternative and conspiracy theories surrounding Jesus’ Resurrection are, strictly speaking, not impossible, but they’re not very likely either so we’re left with what remains, that Jesus died, was buried and on the third day rose again from the dead. That is a statement of faith and for many people today, as for St Thomas all those years ago, believing in such an improbable thing is difficult. Unlike St Thomas, people today can’t come to faith by seeing with their own eyes and touching with their own hands, so we have to rely on faith. Faith is not the same as knowing, it’s not the same as concrete certainty but that doesn’t mean faith is or has to be unreasonable. And when we look at the events of the first Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day, and what happened in the wake of those things, the best explanation and the best response is to simply say, Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Amen.

Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Easter, 16th April 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Like new born children you should thirst for milk, on which your spirit can grow to strength, alleluia!

The Collect
Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins,
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness,
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)       
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Acts 2:14, 22-32
Psalm 16:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31